What direction it goes largely will be determined when frustrated league owners huddle on Monday in New York with harried Commissioner Harry Usher, who has been beset by a variety of well-publicized problems:

Dissension among owners over whether to switch to the fall in 1986 -- as originally planned -- or stay and play springtime football.

A 6.7 percent decline in attendance from this time last year.

A 24 percent drop in television ratings.

Two teams -- the ownerless Los Angeles Express and the Houston Gamblers -- have been subsidized this season by the other 12 teams. Birmingham and San Antonio also are having serious financial difficulties.

''We are not a model of stability, but no other sports league is either,'' Usher said last week.

Monday's meeting is sure to be a lively one because owners are overwhelmingly at odds with Usher over the main topic on the agenda: whether to move to the fall in 1986 as planned -- and as Usher strongly has urged -- or to stay in the spring.

Usher has said fans don't support spring football and that sticking with the format would not be worth the cost to increase fan awareness. Pro-spring owners find at least a ray of hope in the spring format while feeling a move to the fall against the NFL and college football is suicidal.

Orlando Renegades Managing General Partner Don Dizney, citing the league's inability to secure a television contract for a fall move in 1986, said he will vote to stay in the spring. ''It seems very simple to me,'' Dizney said. ''We have a TV contract next spring, and we don't have one in the fall. No matter what the ABC contract is -- $2, $5 or $7 million -- it's better than nothing.''

John Bassett, Tampa Bay Bandits managing general partner and leader of the antifall movement, said that he has the support of nine owners (counting the Chicago franchise, which is skipping the 1985 season) who want to stay with the springtime format. The teams who apparently are holding out for the fall are New Jersey, Baltimore, Oakland and Memphis.

Bassett has prepared a 60-page report and a 12-minute film on the benefits of playing in the spring and will make the presentation at the meeting. If owners do not rescind a unanimous decision made last August to play in the fall, Bassett has reiterated that he will form his own springtime league.

However, one pro-fall general manager said that Bassett was ''full of beans. There's no way he is going to find 10 teams for the John Bassett League.''

Baltimore Stars President/General Manager Carl Peterson said Wednesday by telephone from his Philadelphia office that Bassett's straw poll was ''off the wall.''

Peterson said the vote is more like 3-7, with four abstentions, for the fall. ''I wish some owners would leave the game of football to the football people,'' he said. ''This isn't tiddly-winks or soccer.''

Peterson, who doesn't have an NFL team to compete with in Baltimore since the Colts left town, must butt heads against baseball's Orioles in the spring, and he naturally is irritated at the pro-spring advocates. ''We've already voted to move to the fall. I've made a commitment to Baltimore based on the decision. I've sold 16,400 season tickets. Other mergers were based on that decision. That decision has affected a lot of people,'' he said.

''For us, the die has been cast, the ship has set sail.''

Although Peterson admits that not having a network TV contract would hurt, he said ESPN's $25 million package and several other TV packages (syndication, local independent TV and international TV) proposed by Usher would keep the league afloat.

Peterson said football was made to be played in the fall and feels the USFL would cut losses and increase each team's share of TV money by shrinking to just eight teams ''like the old AFL.''

The league's other troubles are nothing new. Ten franchises this season have lost spectators. This season's nine-week average was 24,347. Last year it was 29,079.

The four who claim increased attendance are Tampa Bay, New Jersey, Memphis and Orlando. The Renegades, sixth in the USFL with a 28,538 average, are up a whopping 246 percent from last season, when the franchise was located in Washington, D.C. Its gain of more than 20,000 fans per game is by far the largest increase in the league.

The most perplexing case of missing fans is in Denver. The Gold is averaging 13,568 after drawing 33,954 last season and leading the USFL in attendance with 41,739 in 1983. If the Gold were playing poorly, you could understand the apathy. But they are 6-3 -- and 5-0 at home.